Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh '''is a city in southwestern Pennsylvania, and a former steel capital of the United States. It is the second largest city in Pennsylvania, and is a major center of Areum, medical, and technological research today. The city is nestled between three rivers; the Allegheny, Monongahela, and the Ohio; the latter of which is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. Because of this, '''Pittsburgh has historically been a critical junction in river-based trading and shipping, contributing to its position as a technological and cultural center. This city is where Camden Kolt was born and raised. History Originally settled by the French at Fort Duquesne in 1754 due to its strategic location at the junction between three rivers. The fort remained in French control for a scant 4 years, before being retaken by the British during the French and Indian War in 1758, the area renamed as "Pittsburg". From there, it blossomed as a trading outpost for expansion into the western wilds, facilitating the colonization of the rest of the Ohio and Mississippi valley. Starting in the mid-1800s, Pittsburgh (which had added an 'h', in an effort to differentiate itself by the many other 'burgs' spread through the country) would become the focus of a number of industrial titans, notably Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick. The two men would largely be responsible for transforming the city into a center of industry and research, forming the heart of America's industrial revolution. The money channeled into the city would birth such institutions as the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Technical School (which would later become Carnegie Mellon University), both of which were founded in the midst of the Revelation, with Carnegie's desire to learn and understand more about wizards and their gift with the mysterious element, Areum. Both institutions would become fundamental to this research in later years. In 1927, Pittsburgh was the site of the well-publicized "Gasometer Explosion Incident", in which a 5 million cubic foot natural gas tank, the largest in the world at the time, developed a leak and violently exploded during repair efforts. The explosion rattled the city, shattering windows in a half-mile radius, and onlookers reported seeing a "cloud of crimson" that hung over the disaster site for mere moments afterward. Beneath the former site of the gasometer, an emptied series of previously-unknown, naturally-formed chambers were found, attracting global attention toward what may lie beneath the city. A flurry of mining companies were started in the areas surrounding the city as a result, and the city's population surged with new migrants. Despite their failure to confirm suspicions that there existed underground deposits of Areum in the area, their mining efforts uncovered vast deposits of coal and the raw minerals necessary in steel production. During World War II, as America's need for raw materials in the war effort grew, Pittsburgh's '''steel production would expand into untapped parts of the surrounding countryside, resulting in 1944's New Kensington Incident, in which a pocket of stabilized liquid Areum was discovered beneath the surface of New Kensington, PA. Though this incident resulted in the death of 176 miners via asphyxiation, it was the first confirmed discovery of Areum left trapped beneath the surface presumably by glaciers during Earth's Pleistocene Epoch, and it immediately attracted a huge amount of international attention to the city. Thanks to renewed interest in Areum mining, coupled with advancements in technology required in locating and safely extracting it, '''Pittsburgh became an unlikely source of the substance, as well as a center for its research and technological application. This research would largely be spearheaded by Carnegie Mellon University, and would become the driving force behind Pittsburgh's economy in the coming years, as the war ended and the need for steel production dwindled.